The Cuban Missile Crisis The Cold War KS3 History homework help for year 7, 8 and 9 BBC Bitesize

The US requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on 25 October and Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, confronted Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin and challenged him to admit the existence of the missiles. Communications between the two superpowers had entered a new and revolutionary period, with the threat of mutual destruction now accompanying the deployment of nuclear weapons. With President Kennedy making known his aggressive intentions of a possible airstrike followed by an invasion on Cuba, Khrushchev sought a diplomatic compromise.

• Air Force General Curtis LeMay presented a pre-invasion bombing plan to Kennedy in September, and spy flights and minor military harassment from US forces at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base were the subject of continual Cuban diplomatic complaints to the US government.
• Critics, including Seymour Melman and Seymour Hersh, suggested that the Cuban Missile Crisis had encouraged the United States to use military means, as in the later Vietnam War.
• The following day, the Soviet leader sent a letter proposing that the USSR would dismantle its missiles in Cuba if the Americans removed their missile installations in Turkey.
• The R-12 was a medium-range ballistic missile capable of carrying a thermonuclear warhead.
• What may have been the most dangerous moment in the crisis was not recognized until the Cuban Missile Crisis Havana conference in October 2002, which marked its 40th anniversary.